He stood, patting himself rapidly to make sure that nothing had fallen out of pockets bulging with letters and note-books. Outside the door he turned, hand raised, to say,
“No weakness now! Confidence above all!”
Still the hospital and the brisk friendly visitor, unashamed of being healthy.
“I’m grateful to you and the people who sent you,” Gerlach repeated.
“Not at all. Precisely.”
Gerlach shut the door. He was not left alone long. The door was jerked open noisily and in walked his nephew.
No sooner had he thrown himself into a chair than he got up and began to walk about. Gerlach watched him in silence. He was restlessly tired, as though he had not slept. His one eyebrow twitched and the fineness of his features was blurred, as though they were lightly swollen.
Rudi stood in front of him.
“What the devil have I to live for? No, don’t look at me kindly. I detest it.”
“Is that all you came to say?” Lucius asked.
“No. The chap who was here the other day — Leist. He’s a sound fellow.”
Now we’re getting it, he thought. Leist intends to make use of him to punish me.
“I didn’t like him.”
“Why? He’s right. A defeated people has only one duty — to become free again. Isn’t that true?”
“Of course.”
“It ought to fight, conspire, tell lies, anything, so long as it doesn’t lose its nerve.”
If I make the wrong answer, I shall lose him. He hesitated and said slowly,
“In certain circumstances, yes.”
“Then why did you refuse to help?” Rudi said fiercely.
“Because what he is plotting is useless, and because what our people need is oblivion and quietness, years of it. Go out and ask one of the women in the basement of a house in ruins if she wants her hungry children to fight, conspire, tell lies. She’ll tell you that what she wants is the truth of bread and warm blankets, not violence, not more deaths; and to know where she can safely give birth to her next child.”
“Nowhere, so long as the country is run by over-fed jailers,” Rudi said, with extreme bitterness.
“And you think it will be safer when you begin the murders again?”
Rudi was sullenly without a word.
He has been a soldier, Lucius thought, but not as in our war. (He did not try to shake off the fascination the earlier war still had for him, with its fraternity of both sides of a no-man’s-land; the only fraternity of our era.) He and his friends were brigands, trained to a solitary violence, not soldiers. If they had been trained by Leist to be assassins, he would not have used any different methods.
“I ask you not to engage yourself until we see what future the victors — call them that, but what have they to be proud of? — are getting ready for us. In any case, Rudi — in any case — your friend Leist is a cynic. Since he knows, he must, that any terrorism now, any terrorist acts — all he offers you — will be punished mercilessly. You will be crushed before you can begin.”
“There was nothing cautious about my father!” Rudi said, with the same bitterness.
A knock at the door.
It was Rechberg. He stares like a sleepwalker, Lucius thought. Without troubling to find out why his cousin had come, he said,
“Tell this boy not to ruin himself and his friends. Who is this fellow Leist? You brought him here. But you certainly don’t approve of him or his plots — if they are plots and not merely frivolous talk. Tell Rudi so. He mistrusts my — my morality.”
Rechberg had moved to the centre of the room; the only expression on his face was of fatigue and a sort of inner attentiveness, as if he were afraid of withdrawing his support from himself. His features had softened, and he had begun to stoop, so that his plump body seemed hunchbacked.
“Leist? Ah, a good fellow,” he said slowly. “In times like these, my dear, we mustn’t try to keep our hands too clean. We’re not pharisees.”
Lucius felt a cold anger.
“Yes, I know how tolerant you are,” he said in a low voice. “And how prudent. You were able to tolerate the men who brought back torture as a punishment, and too cautious to try to keep me out of their hands. What prudence are you meditating now?”
He saw the movement behind his cousin’s eyes of a sick anguish, and felt sorry he had accused him. What good did it do?
Before Rechberg could speak, another and timid knocking began on the door.
The man who now came in was a little Jew, of uncertain age, perhaps over fifty. He was thin, buttoned tightly into a curious garment like a frock-coat, but shorter. It had been given him, perhaps, and altered. He was smiling. Behind his powerful spectacles, his eyes, magnified, sparkled with friendliness, and an innocently candid gaiety, like a child’s.
“Have I the pleasure,” he chirped, “to be speaking to Dr Gerlach?”
“I am Dr Gerlach,” Lucius said drily. He was not able to check a feeling of distaste.
More smiles and a formal bow from the waist.
“Heinrich Kalb. Excuse me for troubling you. I have a letter for you. Yes. From England, from my friend who is professor of history in London. He is also your friend, I should say; he admires you greatly, when he heard I was coming back to Germany he asked me to find you and give you his letter. Excuse me that I have been so long finding where you live, I have made many enquiries, and only yesterday evening I heard that the great Dr Gerlach is here, in Berlin, and I came today at once. Here is the letter.”
While Gerlach read the letter, Kalb looked brightly and timidly round the room. He recognised it. He had never seen it before, but he recognised it; he had lived long enough in exile to know the taste of it. Happy! Had ever man or sparrow been happier than he was when he lived in a dingy room in London? Yet even I, he thought — there were moments — that bitter salt. . . He looked at Gerlach again — in profile, a gothic St Francis; the direct view had something disquieting, the hooded eyes and long deep folds in the cheeks — and thought: In his own country, and an exile. His poverty the poverty of a man who has stripped himself for exile, not the poverty of the poor. I know.
The young man pacing from side to side of the room ignored him. He would have spoken to the other older man if his diffident smile had not been met by a coldly disdainful stare. No doubt he dislikes Jews, he thought simply. He waited.
Abruptly, the young man stood still, and said loudly,
“The point is that we must have action — even useless. How else can we get our energy back — let alone our pride — unless we have something to do?”
Kalb looked at him closely for the first time. Why, he thought, delighted, I know him. It was Sieber. Before he could remind himself that in fact Sieber was not Sieber, he had said, smiling,
“You are perfectly right. But don’t you remember me? I —”
Appalled by his mistake, he broke down into a confused stammer. My poor head, he thought, striking it.
“No, excuse me, I am an idiot. This is the second time I’ve annoyed you with my nonsense. You’re not Sieber. Oh, excuse me, excuse me, I am a fool, I am sorry.”
The other cut short his apologies in a contemptuous voice.
“I don’t know who the devil you are.”
Gerlach looked up from the letter he had begun to fold carelessly: in an absent voice, scarcely glancing at Kalb, he said,
“Baron von Rechberg. My nephew, Rudolf Gerlach.”
Still completely bewildered, Kalb bowed in a humble way to Rechberg — who took no notice of his politeness. Shaken, he turned back to the elder Gerlach.
“Isn’t he your son? Nephew. Oh, then was it his father who was...”
He realised the enormity of what he was saying. “No, I forget,” he babbled. His mouth remained open in horror.
Gerlach was looking at him with displeasure. As if sending away a servant:
“You needn’t wait, Mr Kalb. There is no answer to the letter.”
St
upefied, he did not move at once. The younger Gerlach took one quick step and stood in front of him, between him and the door.
“What were you going to say about my father?”
He struggled helplessly in a nightmare: at last he stammered,
“I’m always offending you without meaning to. This is terrible, terrible. I don’t know anything about your father, no, nothing —”
“Open the door for Mr Kalb,” Dr Gerlach said quietly. “We don’t need to keep him.”
“Yes, excuse me and let me go,” he said brokenly.
In order to look directly at his uncle, young Gerlach turned his whole body, not merely his head.
“I knew for certain that you were keeping something from me,” he said drily, “ever since you made up a cock and-bull story why you couldn’t give me the letter your English friend —” he sent a flat venomous glance towards Kalb from the corner of his eye — “your other English friend brought you from my father. . . my father.”
He moved back to Kalb.
“Go on with what you were going to say,” he said quietly. “If you don’t, I shall take great pleasure in cutting your throat some night.”
Rechberg spoke, in a gently pitying voice:
“You’d better tell the boy the truth, Lucius. I told you so.”
This is my fault, Kalb thought. His pity for the young man was greater than his shame. If it would have wiped out the last few minutes he would have died joyously. He could not even put his hands over his ears: in an agony of remorse he listened — watching Gerlach’s face when he told the young man that his father had been hanged, and why he had been hanged. When he felt that he could glance, stealthily, at the young man he almost cried out. Rudolf Gerlach’s face had the fixity and inhuman absence of the insane. Humanity came back to it under the form of anger, as soon as Gerlach stopped speaking.
Smiling a little, as if to draw attention to the insult, Rudolf Gerlach said,
“What a lot you must have to talk about with your English friend!” He turned to Kalb. “I’m not surprised when a Jew behaves badly; I don’t like you, you’d better go.”
Kalb felt that he was shut up in this room with a hatred. He became giddy. He thought he was going to faint; he threw his hands out and stood trembling, holding to the table.
“Help me,” he whispered, looking at the elder Gerlach.
Without answering, Gerlach looked past him towards Rechberg, who came forward — he limped — and said coldly,
“I must go. If you like, Mr -er, you can come with me.”
Kalb was unable to move. He stood weakly, his hat was put on him — by Rechberg? — and he felt himself being led and pushed out of the house: after a minute or two he felt also the loathing with which Rechberg supported him, and at once saw that he must spare the other man this annoyance; he drew himself gently away. Well, there’s nothing the matter with me, I can stand, he thought, with relief. Rechberg, in spite of his limp, was walking on rapidly: he trotted after him, sometimes catching up for a moment, dropping behind, breathless, his embarrassment choking in him what little nonchalance he had. He wanted to thank Rechberg and then leave him, and could not imagine the right words.
They had reached the Kurfürstendam. Suddenly Rechberg halted, near the tables of a shabby café.
“Don’t trouble to come any further with me.”
Stricken and thankful, Kalb began, “Thank you, thank you —” He felt lighthearted with the relief of escaping from this man who — his face showed it — despised him, yet foolish and disgraced. He realised that he was alone, talking, hat squeezed in his hand, to no one. He stopped.
In the instant of walking away, Rechberg had lifted his hand in a friendly gesture. It was not meant for Kalb; for a man at one of the tables. Trying to blink away the film on his spectacles, he looked blindly towards this table; a large figure rose and advanced on him, a shadow. Only when it was close, he recognised Leist.
“Ah, Kalb my friend. Let me offer you a drink — we’ll cal! it drink.”
Kalb was glad to sit down. His confidence came back to him with Leist’s rough voice. He clasped his hands, and smiled.
“Well, well, a little party.”
Leist patted his arm.
“We’ll call it a party. What are you doing, eh? I didn’t know you knew our friend. Where did you meet him?”
“It was by accident.” He preferred not to think about his visit to Gerlach, and his hideous mistakes. An impulse he could not control made him add, “He didn’t like me.”
Leist laughed.
“Come, you know who he is. He used to be one of the most powerful men in the country. Will be again. Wealth like his, you know, doesn’t vanish. Ha, it takes more than a war. An old family. He didn’t spring up over night. Why should he like you?”
“Of course not,” Kalb said, ashamed.
“Don’t be ashamed. He regards me with a certain favour. I’ve done him services. I’ll tell him about you. He’ll look at you with a different eye when I’ve done with him. Come now, leave it to me. . . And now, I have news for you.”
Clasping and unclasping his hands, Kalb breathed,
“Oh, what?”
“Ah. Yes, it’s news. A Mantegna, possibly the Dresden one, has been found in the cellar of a house near Alexander-platz. I know nothing more about it, no details. My informant is a man who should know what he’s talking about. . .”
In his joyous excitement Kalb cut him short.
“My dear fellow, I’ll go and look at it at once.”
Leist looked at him, sadly; but it was a contemptuous sadness.
“That’s no way to go about it. Our Russian friends don’t like interference. . . And after all it may be nothing. If you take my advice, you’ll go quietly and look at it. I can arrange that for you. Then if it’s true, we can take steps. It’s not simple, my friend. If you talk about what you’ve heard — if there’s a fuss — do you know what will happen? Mantegna or no, by tomorrow it will be on its way out of reach. Nothing, I say nothing, is too grotesque, too exaggerated, to be expected. What d’you think? Or does it seem perfectly natural to you that Berlin, our Berlin, has to run about for four masters?”
“No, no, I’m an idiot,” Kalb stammered. He discovered in himself a deep happiness. He was still needed. “It’s something of ours. I shall save it.”
“You’re a good fellow. . . Have you a notebook? Right. I’ll make a rough plan for you. Incidentally, you can do me a favour.”
“Anything, anything,” he said joyously.
Chapter Seventeen
Alone with his nephew, Lucius Gerlach said,
“It was your father’s wish you shouldn’t be told. No doubt I should have ignored it. But — the dead are forced to trust us.”
He stopped. Rudi had walked to the open door and was standing there with his back to the room. Poor child. . . An agony that had nothing to do with Rudi seized him. He saw Emil in one of the moments when he was purely a jet of delight and energy. What tortured him was the thought that this, this delight, had been killed. He believed in survival, but he did not, for all the energy of his faith, he did not imagine what survived, what hands, what smile? And even. . . whatever his felicity now, would he not rather have lived? He could not think: I shall be able to comfort him. Between Emil and him now lay this icy desert, only of faith. How many times he had tried to make himself nothing, a shell for the dead to pick up and speak through. Useless.
He became aware again of Emil’s son.
“You know, I loved him as few men love their children,” he said, with difficulty. “I can’t pretend to like what he did. Any more than I approve of the two men who gave away their fellow-prisoners. He took it on himself to do justice on them; it brought him under the justice of the English, who couldn’t conceivably let him set up a law of his own inside a prisoner-of-war camp. You understand that. He understood it, because he tried to make the death of the men he hanged look like suicide. Don’t you see? He had accepted in advanc
e the right of the English to punish him if they found out.”
His nephew had not moved. In a coolly jeering voice,
“What could he have done with the swine except punish them?”
He hesitated, then said,
“There was the justice of God.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Rudi said lightly.
Silence. Rudi broke it to say,
“The chap you’re selling yourself to is here. Do you mind if I go?”
Hurrying to the doorway, Lucius saw him walk past Gary in the stony place between house and street without a glance. He went back into the room.
“What’s the matter with your nephew?” Gary said, smiling.
Lucius looked at him with indifference; hostile.
“He knows you hanged his father, and he dislikes you for it.”
Now what? Impossible from his voice to know whether the hostility were meant for himself or Gary.
“I?”
“Emil was hanged by the English. It seems more reasonable that you, not some round-faced lieutenant or corporal —”
“Reasonable!” Gary said lightly: “you Germans don’t know anything about it. You — you do. But you’re one of the monsters this country breeds very occasionally, pure reason and no bowels. Like Kant.”
“Thanks for Kant.”
Gary remembered what he had been going to say.
“This is a dangerous and unhealthy place.”
“I know it,” Lucius said calmly. “But it gives me the stomach-ache to worry, so I don’t think about it.”
His indifference to himself sharpened Gary’s affection: in the same moment he felt, with bitterness, that his affection weighed as little with Lucius as did his need of him. He spoke without preparing the phrase, less carefully than he had meant.
“Have you come to your senses?”
The Black Laurel Page 19
